The idea of having a choice sounds great, but it can be both a blessing and a curse. Think about it: How many times have you stood in the grocery store aisle, crippled by an inability to choose between 50 varieties of something as basic as toothpaste?
Well, determining the best way to store documents in Office 365 often poses the same problem for many people.
That’s because there are a lot of different ways to store documents in Office 365, which is great if you know which storage method is best for each situation. But if you don’t, it can be very confusing. So today I’m going to review some of the most common use cases to help jumpstart your own Office 365 document storage decision-making process.
But First, Why Store Documents with Office 365?
Having the ability to store documents empowers Office 365 users to collaborate even more effectively. When Word, Excel and other documents are stored online, every member of a team can refer to them whenever they need to. As for where to store the documents, understanding the needs of the project, as well as the people you’re working with, will be the starting point for you in choosing the best option.
Use Case 1: You Have Some Documents You’re Working On
If you have some documents that you need to store but aren’t sure yet how you’ll use them, often the best thing to do is store them on OneDrive for Business. This application was designed to be a storage place for documents for you as a user so you can quickly access them when you need them.
Think of OneDrive as a self-storage facility for your digital content. You can share the things you store there with other people, but primarily it’s a place for you to stash documents that you’re creating or are in progress.
Use Case 2: You’re Working with a Team
Do you need to work as part of a team? Consider using Office Groups to bring your team members together. Groups are great in situations where three to eight people are working together on a particular task. Setting up a team site within SharePoint is another useful option for promoting collaboration in a small group.
Use Case 3: You Need a Department Site
A SharePoint site provides a place where everyone in your department can view your team calendar and find the documents they need. Sites in Office 365 provide a lot of flexibility to help you meet the precise needs of your team.
Use Case 4: You Want to Go Bigger
Do you want to share your documents with even more people? You need a hosted intranet solution to store your documents and make them easily accessible to everyone in your organization.If you’re an Office 365 user, SharePoint is the perfect place to host your intranet. It’s designed to handle large-scale document sharing in an organized intranet environment, so why not put it to use?
Final Thought
I hope these use cases help shed light on how to evaluate your situation to help you determine the best way to store your documents in Office 365.
But remember, this is only high-level guidance. You’ll need to experiment with document storage and sharing solutions on your own in order to find one that works best for you and your team. So set up a pilot first and address any pain points before you migrate all your documents into the new system.
